Inland by Kat Rosenfield

Everything I had heard about Inland told me it was going to be a weird book and I probably wasn’t going to like it because it crossed that thin line from just weird enough into TOO WEIRD…

But the cover is pretty and I’m a sucker for pretty covers and the plot really did sound interesting:

After nine years spent suffocating in the arid expanse of the Midwest, far from the sea where her mother drowned, Callie Morgan and her father are returning to the coast. But something is calling to her from the river behind their house and from the ocean miles away. Just as Callie’s life begins to feel like her own, and as the potential for romance is blossoming, the intoxicating pull of the dark water seeps into her mind, filling her with doubt and revealing family secrets.

The cover and the blurb combined, enticed me. I like weird, so I went in pretty confident that I was going to like this book. And I found that I did! Quite a lot! In fact, the weirdest thing about the book was that it was thought to be too odd to be enjoyable.

Kate Rosenfield, I think, is more known for her other novel Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone which was an Edgar Award Finalist and praised for its lush mysteriousness. Rosenfield brings that lush mysteriousness to Inland

There is something about the descriptions in this book that really compel the reader when the text itself isn’t really moving the resolution of the mystery forward.

Because there is no hiding when your lover is the sea. It leaves its scent in your hair and its taste on your skin. It tiptoes after you, following the salty trail of your footsteps, spilling behind you through the door and nestling in the floorboard. It is too big, too bold, too changeable and brash to keep a confidence.

She manages to infuse the text with apt sensory details, creating that perfect picture of the humid waterlogged atmosphere of Florida even to readers who’ve never been to the ol’ Sunshine State.

I had imagined Florida as a place that never changed, seasonless and stagnant with no sense of the passage of the month, but the light of the winter sun is ever so slightly different: slender, shyer. Nature is subtle in her shifts here, as quiet about the seasons as her children are loud and proud.

The book is as eerie as any thriller and as wondrous as any fantasy. There were moments where I wasn’t sure what genre I was reading. Parts where I was sure I was reading a mermaid fantasy and other times a psychological thriller. And the ending seemed to split itself in a way that those readers who preferred fantasy (like me) or those who preferred thriller (maybe you) both finished the book satisfied that their interpretations were validated.

Like the ocean, this book itself is deep and dark and mysterious. The prose attracted me and the mystery kept me turning the pages. Overall the book was a perfect blend of the two creating a genuinely enjoyable atmospheric reading experience.

I give the book 3 manatees swimming in the sea and a bucket of seashells collected from the seashore by an unreliable narrator!

Until next time, tell me: Inland or Coastline?

adios sirenas y brujas